You’ve got to get your bets in quick, says William Hill – because as soon as the winner is known, they’re likely to stop betting on the award.

One report reads into Hills’ admission that “the winners of events [like] the Oscars and the Booker Prize … are often decided days in advance”.

Spokeswoman Jennie Prest said, “If a market is decided by a judging panel somewhere then they could have decided four or five days before the award is presented”.

Hills recently carried on accepting bets on the “Best of the Booker Awards” up to the day of the presentation event – even though Salman Rushdie, the eventual winner, was trading at odds of up to 1/30 (30-1 on) on betting exchange Betfair.

However, they have previously had to close the book on Booker Award betting because a surge in relatively big-money bets has suggested the eventual winner has become known.

In 2002 they had to stop taking bets after the Booker winner was inadvertently announced on the organisation’s website a day before the literary prize was awarded.

Midnight’s Children, winner of the 1981 Booker Prize and a 25th-anniversary “Booker of Bookers” in 1993, was being quoted as the 6/4 favourite by William Hill yesterday. The book had been favourite to win from the moment the book award odds were announced.

Rushdie said, “I’m absolutely delighted and would like to thank all those readers around the world who voted.

“It’s very exciting and gratifying, the more so because so many of the voters were so young. I’m very happy to think that Midnight’s Children continues to be relevant.”

Rushdie’s novel, which won the Man Booker Prize in 1981, was 6/4 favourite with William Hill before the bookie stopped offering odds on the prize earlier today. Midnight’s Children was trading at 1.04 – about 25-1 on – around the same time.

According to a Press Trust of India story in The Hindu, a Hills senior executive said, “The voting pattern has been well established now and will not change”.

The public vote for the award will carry on until 8 July – and the winner will be announced as part of the London Literature Festival on 10 July – but the bookies clearly feel nothing will change the voting’s outcome.

The South-African author, shortlisted for his 1999 Booker winner Disgrace, is currently trading at 1.21 – nearly 5/1 on – on Betfair, the online betting exchange.

Irish bookie Paddy Power is offering odds of 3/1 about Coetzee winning, while Bet365 makes him 13/4 second favourite. The pair still make Salman Rushdie favourite with Midnight’s Children, for which they offer odds of even money and 10/11 respectively.

The exchange market for the book award, which is voted for by the general public, is only small – £382 has been matched on Betfair, compared to the £1.3 million matched for tomorrow night’s Euro 2008 final – so the traditional layers might not want to read too much into the sudden slashing of Coetzee’s odds.

Critics of the betting exchanges
The way the small, slow market is developing reminds me of how betting exchanges – in the eyes of their critics – can allow someone with a bit of insider information to become an amateur layer and fleece the public.

It also reminds me of the good old-fashioned starting-price (SP) scam – a tool that has been used to mug punters (and the bookies) for at least a century to my knowledge.

£28 is being offered to anyone who wants to lay Coetzee at over the odds (ie, above 3.65, which is his current ‘lay’ price). Exactly the same amount is being offered to anyone who wants to bet on Rushdie to win at odds of 2.78 or shorter, and there’s £70 available for to a punter who wants to back Coetzee at 1.21 or shorter.

The SP scam makes its way into the literary salon…
Now, if I had inside information on the current voting for the book award, and knew that someone was going to win, then it wouldn’t be too hard for me to nip into my local turf accountants to place the bet. With the kind of money being traded here, I doubt they’d turn down the odd £100 bet. So why, when I can get 3/1 on, say, Coetzee, would I back him down to 1/5 on the exchanges?

Well, I might do if I knew that my £100 was going to skew the market totally – pushing someone else – like, say, Rushdie – out to 2/1 or longer when he’s only available at a best-priced even-money on the High Street.

If Coetzee looks like a nailed-on cert the day before the ceremony, I should have no shortage of willing layers to take the £1,000 or so I (or my associates) would suddenly be looking to wager on Rushdie, at vastly inflated odds.

…and other speculation
Of course, there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that’s what’s happening here. It may be that someone’s had a bet with a friend in the pub, and is just laying off their liabilities on the exchange (one of the beauties about Betfair and its ilk in my eyes), or it might be that J M Coetzee’s had a plunge on himself, and it’s his own money that’s backed him in to such short odds.

The winner of the Best of the Booker prize will be announced in a fortnight’s time, on 10 July. But until then, it is still a matter of pure speculation.

But with the general public voting for this book award, rather than a judging panel, and Waterstones devoting a shelf over to flogging the entire shortlist, Midnight’s Children might not be judged the literary tour de force the layers are expecting.

Rushdie the favourite
A similar contest was held in 1993 and was won by Rushdie – a fact not lost on William Hill, which made Midnight’s Children its 6/4 favourite as soon as the Best of the Booker shortlist was announced.

The 1981 novel has held its appeal, and, at the time the shortlist for the book award was announced it probably was the best-known book on the list. It still features at number 583 on Amazon’s sales rank – J M Coetzee’s Disgrace,  the second favourite, is 1,081 in comparison.

Rushdie’s novel is now odds-on favourite with Bet365 – largely, one would suspect, on the basis of the Amazon rankings, which are easily accessible by any punter who fancies a bet on a book award. But Amazon is yet to fully reflect the nation’s literary shopping habits – especially those of people who vote in book awards. And, thanks to sales displays like those in Waterstones, a whole new generation of readers will be discovering the other books on the shortlist – if they weren’t aware of them already.

A different story on the betting exchanges
A look at the exchanges shows a totally different picture to that painted by the bookies. Midnight’s Children currently trades at 2.26 on Betfair – good value for anyone who wants a punt on Rushdie – but Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road is only just behind it at 2.28 (compared to 5/1 at Paddy Power).

Pat Barker’s novel is part of a trilogy – and as such, it is difficult to judge its popularity purely from Amazon’s sales rank. It was also published in 1995, two years after the first ‘Best of the Booker’ and so cannot be judged against Rushdie in terms of that contest.

The recent big-screen adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Atonement will have whetted the public’s appetite for First World War stories like The Ghost Road (always a popular subject, as Sebastian Faulks pre-Bond career shows), and it has an appeal outside the bookish circles that some of its rivals (Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, for example) do not.

The Ghost Road is still offered at 5/1 third favourite at Paddy Power – for now. If it continues to trade at such a markedly lower price on Betfair the Irish layer is bound to cut its prices, but for now it has to be tipped as worth a bet.

Selection

• 2 pts The Ghost Road (5/1, Paddy Power) to win the ‘Best of the Booker’ book award.